Community Health Services

We have offered health services continuously since 1988.  Currently, we have three programs that focus on the health needs of our community.

Healthcare Accessing

Our Healthcare Accessing Program primarily serves elderly and middle-aged Cambodians who have great difficulty accessing health care because of barriers that include lack of English, lack of transportation, and lack of understanding about American health care practices.  We work with over 50 hospitals, clinics, and doctors" offices.  Last year, we served elderly and middle-aged Cambodians with a total of 681 contacts.

Trauma Resolution and Stress Reduction

"Opportunities for Change" was originally funded by The California Endowment as a pilot project to test the effectiveness of an innovative approach to healing trauma and increasing well-being.  "Change"participants have been Cambodian and Vietnamese survivors of torture and extreme trauma.  In developing this approach, we brought together principles and processes from two distinct systems of personal change and healing:  (1) Stephen Covey"s "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" and (2) Peter Levine's 'Somatic Experiencing.'  Their synergy has resulted in an innovative approach to change and healing, an approach which is gentle and gradual, and which brings about long-lasting effects.  In its first year of existence, the Change Project helped 85% of its participants significantly decrease their symptoms of trauma, reduce their dysfunctional behavior, and increase their experiences of well-being.  Periodic oral interviews and written objective assessments have made it possible for us to measure and document outcomes over

Background.  During its 20-year existence, our agency has developed expertise in helping limited-English-speaking, uprooted people work through their barriers to adjustment and make progress towards well-being and family self-sufficiency.  Most of our clients have survived trauma and in their home countries or during their escape and immigration journeys. When we enroll them in our programs, we assess and provide them services that respond to their needs:  we teach English and job skills, place youths and adults in jobs, help families access health care, and help children and youths improve their academic performance, build their character strengths, and plan their future careers. 

Though most of our clients achieve successful practical outcomes, too many continue to suffer in their hearts, minds, and bodies, from deep grief and bodily pain.  Their symptoms - whether emotional, physical, or both - are the results of war, hard labor, starvation, actual or threatened torture, and the broken connection to homeland, family, and friends.  If left unresolved, these trauma symptoms continue to haunt them, and result in suffering, debilitation, dysfunction, and disease. 

In order to help our clients resolve their trauma symptoms, we designed this "Opportunities for Change" project. Our participants learn the causes of stress, pain, trauma, and dysfunctional habits. And they learn practical tools for relaxing stress, relieving pain, healing trauma, and changing dysfunctional habits. The approach is slow, gentle, simple and profound. Our first-year outcomes have been significant: educed sadness, worry, anger, aggression, nervousness, dizziness, headaches, bodily pain, nightmares, and insomnia. In some cases, the symptoms have stopped altogether. In inverse proportion, as negative symptoms decrease, positive indicators of well-being increase: resiliency, comfort, tolerance for others, connectedness, love, happiness, wanting to be healthy, seeing greater meaning in life, having options and making choices. Participants understand themselves better, gain practical tools for change, feel empowered, and expand their capacity to manage challenges and lead fulfilling lives.

Minnie Street Family Resource Center

We partner with local agencies in a County-funded program that provides critical mental health services to our Hispanic and Cambodian community. In the past two years, our agency has provided health accessing and family counseling to more than 200 Cambodian parents in our community.

Human Trafficking Victims Services

We are part of an important collaborative, funded by ORR and locally by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange, to provide assistance to Orange County women who are certified, or may become certified, as victims of human trafficking (slave labor or sex trade). Over the past 2 years, our agency has worked with 25 of these victims.